In the animal kingdom, survival essentially boils down to eat or be eaten. How organisms accomplish the former and avoid the latter reveals an immense array of defense mechanisms. Maybe you can outrun your prey. Perhaps you ...

It's the stuff of nightmares: a rockface that comes alive with a writhing mass of snapping serpents seemingly hellbent on working together to capture and consume a defenceless young marine iguana. This jaw-dropping scene ...

Some studies have suggested that the visual systems of humans and other primates are finely tuned to identify dangerous creatures such as snakes and spiders. This is understandable because, among our ancestors, those who ...

Snakes are a very diverse group of present-day reptiles, with nearly 3,600 known species. They are readily recognized by their long bodies and lack of limbs. The origin of snakes from lizard-like precursors with paired limbs ...

Snakes lost their limbs over 100 million years ago, but scientists have struggled to identify the genetic changes involved. A Cell paper publishing October 20 sheds some light on the process, describing a stretch of DNA involved ...

Günther's sea snake (Microcephalophis cantoris), a rarely seen venomous sea snake with distribution thought to stretch from the Malay Peninsula to Pakistan, has now been recorded from Iranian coastal waters off the western ...